Post-2020 Gyaru Character Design, Manga Trends, Racism (Sample)
An analysis of the chara design and representation of gyaru characters in anime-styled fiction, available for tier 2 ko-fi subs.
Asalam aleikoum how's it going. This is one of the first articles part of our series focusing on character design in anime-styled works.
Intro
The words "gyaru" and "otaku" have been around for decades, but with major shifts in manga trends in the 2010s, both words primarily became character personality adjectives rather than describing lifestyles, fashion, or hobbies. Now, gyaru primarily means "girls part of the cool kids club" in opposition to otaku characters. It's a reductive way to easily class characters and is tied with things such as the "I'm a mob character" type of framing that is prevalent in naroukei and tons of manga nowadays. (If you speak JP and don't mind Heaven Burns Red spoilers/are caught up with the story, I talked about it a little in my let's play). Ultimately this is an Nth Color issue begotten from how pop-culture nowadays is following trends harder than ever. Everything is safe bets only, to minimize losses and rarely take risks. It's hard to get excited for anything.
This is why I often mention "post-2020 gyaru characters". This is in order to separate the idea of "gyaru" characters nowadays and the idea of "gyaru" characters that someone like me, an "anime boomer", would have. As in someone who watched a lot of anime from the 70s-2000s. And who discovered Japanese pop-culture at most in early 2000s, when gyaru fashion was still new.
This article is a in-depth explanation on my thoughts behind gyaru chara design, and how it has changed over the years. While I did some research, one person alone can only accomplish so much, so I am not fully certain of the info regarding gyaru fashion in the latter parts of the article. And I don't want to spread misinformation. Like, there are already enough off the mark analyzes on gothloli fashion from random white people out there. It'd be quite stupid to repeat that mistake myself. That's partly why this is subs only.
Gyaru and Manga Trends
This video (which I couldn't embed because Ghost seems to be bugging lately) is Shiun Sumika in Gakuen Idolmaster. She's a typical "post-2020-gyaru" character to give you an idea. I like her overall, though I still haven't read past Step 1 of her storyline. Some call characters like her "Reiwa gyaru" but I dislike this term for reasons we will see later on.
Most manga are following trends and are all copying each other, doing what's popular. This has always been a thing. But I believe that with the rise of Twitter self-published manga and digital manga platforms in the early 2010s, this became a much bigger problem. Whenever you had a popular manga, every editor and publishing company started green-lighting copycat projects from the writers and mangaka under their supervision.
The biggest example is the naroukei (isekai) boom. But there are several others.
You have manga like Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san in 2012 that got popular and started the "teasing girls trend".
You have manga like Ramen Daisuki Koizumi-san in 2013 that started the "eating food" trend, which is different from "cooking" manga such as Iron Wok Yan, Bartender, or Yakitate Japan.
And then you had the gyaru manga boom in the early 2010s. As in gyaru characters were always a thing, but they got strikingly more popular at that point. I'm not sure which manga got really popular and started the trend, but there are a few ones I really like. Most notably Gyaru Gohan, which mixes the gyaru trend and the eating food trend. Dosanko Gyaru wa Namara Menkoi, which is a really well written love comedy. And then Gyaru Tensei, a gyaru isekai manga that got cancelled in two volumes despite being a comedy masterpiece.
